You won't get a more "official" response than http://www.pragma-ade.com/general/manuals/mreadme.pdf

". . . and don’t bother discussing licence issues and related things with us for the mere sake of discussing licence stuff."

If someone wants to use ConTeXt commercially I advise her to contact Pragma ADE, if only to get a support contract (if they offer such a thing).

http://www.pragma-ade.com/general/manuals/mreadme.pdf In the readme above we can read on page 2 (about the code it self): "The program code (i.e. anything not under the /doc subtree) is distributed under the Creative Commons GNU GPL" and "The GNU General Public License is a Free Software license. Like any Free Software license, it grants to you the four following freedoms: The freedom to run the program for any purpose." So I don't really see any issues about using Context commercially, as long as someone is not trying to create a new system named "MyOwnTex" that is based on Context, and trying to distribute it without obeying Context's license. That's what it's told on the end of page 2 and beginning of page 3 of the readme: "If you modify your copy or copies of the program or any portion of it, or develop a program based upon it, you may distribute the resulting work provided you do so under the GNU General Public License. Any translation of the GNU General Public License must be accompanied by the GNU General Public License." As someone said the Docs (page 4 of the readme) are shared with a different, noncommercial license. Miguel Queirós

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 11:40, Matija Šuklje wrote:

*On topic* I'd also _very_ much like to see what's up with ConTeXt licensing. From what it seems it looks like TeX Live is relicensing ConTeXt in its distribution. And both helping the Gentoo Licensing team and being Deputy Legal Coordinator of the FSFE, that's something that is my concern.

If you volunteer some time, I invite you to lunch to help me/us figure out what to do with licence of hyph-utf8 (both package itself and included patterns). Or dinner before/after foss meeting tomorrow ... Targeting TeX Live 2011 if possible ... Mojca

On Wed, Mar 02, 2011 at 11:41:58AM +0100, Martin Schröder wrote:

2011/3/2 Mojca Miklavec :

...

I really like the particular answer pointing to bugroff licence:    http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/5947/bugroff.html

It's a nice joke, but for practical purposes a one-clause BSD license allows the same freedoms, but is legally clear.

I was about to say that, though I'm pro strong copyleft (AKA GPL when fits) myself, though I highly doubt, for practical reasons ;), that any one can take a BSD licensed ConTeXt and make a closed source derivative with any substantial improvement. Regards, Khaled -- Khaled Hosny Egyptian Arab

On Wed, Mar 02, 2011 at 12:08:35PM +0100, Martin Schröder wrote:

2011/3/2 Khaled Hosny :

...

I was about to say that, though I'm pro strong copyleft (AKA GPL when fits) myself, though I highly doubt, for practical reasons ;), that any one can take a BSD licensed ConTeXt and make a closed source derivative with any substantial improvement.

That may be legally possible. But who wants to support such a beast? Seriously: Using ConTeXt mkIV without the possibility of support by Hans et.al. is a desaster waiting to happen.

That what I meant. Actually if someone succeeds doing that, it is well earned money :p Regards, Khaled -- Khaled Hosny Egyptian Arab

On 2-3-2011 12:10, Taco Hoekwater wrote:

Hi,

On 03/02/11 11:41, Martin Schröder wrote:

...

It's a nice joke, but for practical purposes a one-clause BSD license allows the same freedoms, but is legally clear.

Same for me, but in collaborative works, that is usually not doable. Once a single line of a project is GPL-ed, all of it has to be.

Anyway, here is what I wrote:

http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12431/using-context-commercially

I am talking for Hans there, but I believe I am allowed to. Hans, if you disagree with anything I wrote, please tell me and I will correct the answer and apologize.

sounds ok to me, Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------